Good for Nothing Read online

  It feels good to have a plan. He is directed and motivated; once he has a plan, successful implementation is a foregone conclusion. I’ve earned a break.

  Food sounds good, but he’s determined that tomorrow he’ll wake up lighter than this morning. So he walks to the kitchen and looks for something healthy. The fruit basket only has bananas, and bananas aren’t his favorite. He looks in the pantry for cereal. Lynn’s Special K seems like the best choice. He goes for a heaping handful of Lucky Charms instead. He likes to let the chalky, desiccated little marshmallows swell with moisture in his mouth before chomping into them.

  The chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream beckons to him from the freezer, but he ignores it. He’s proud of his willpower. He figures that since he’s only had a little cereal he deserves to reward himself with a beer while he paints. It’s early to be drinking, but he doesn’t have to drive anywhere. Besides, drinking beer and manual labor go hand in hand. It’s the one useful thing his father ever taught him.

  He twists the cap off a Sam Adams and winces at the twinge of pain as the teeth along the cap’s edge catch on the makeshift bandage wrapped around his palm. He shakes the cap loose and meanders back into the office.

  He takes stock of the job ahead. He imagines Lynn’s glee when she gets home and sees what a great job he’s done: the room looking fresh and crisp, all the furniture moved back in place. Dylan will tell him how good it looks, hopping up to hug his leg, like a koala clinging to the trunk of a tree. Sara will give him a rare smile and Lynn will kiss him, for the first time in a long time. Hell, maybe she will even invite him down to her new bedroom, where they can screw as loudly as they want. Yes, this office will be my fresh start.

  The room had been his gym before the remodel, and Lynn’s craft room, back when they liked one another’s company. It’s smallish for a bedroom but plenty big for an office. Sara and that weasel she is dating had moved the desk, filing cabinets, and bookcases haphazardly into the middle of the room. So first things first: get a screwdriver and take the faceplates off the outlets and switches.

  He takes a long swig of beer and sets it on the top shelf of one of the bookcases. He cinches the belt of his robe again as he returns from the kitchen with a screwdriver and starts on the switch plate next to the door. He places the screws and plate on the desk and begins to crawl around the room and take off outlet covers. His robe falls open and is in the way again, so Flip shucks it off and whips it onto the desk. The robe’s belt smacks his beer and the bottle glugs its contents onto the top shelf of books. Flip stands frozen, watching the foamy liquid do its damage.

  “Perfect,” he says. He picks up the bottle and pitches it in the kitchen garbage. He considers recycling, but the bin is in the mud room and he doesn’t have the energy. Next time. He comes back with a roll of paper towels and sops up all he can. The books will always smell like beer.

  In a fit, he clears the whole shelf with one sweep of his arm. An oversized, hardbound, self-help tome his wife had recently purchased for him falls, corner first, directly on top of his bare foot. He hops around among the damp books.

  “Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” he says. He is pretty sure he’s broken a bone.

  He limps over to the faceplate he already started, hunkers down on all fours, and continues his circuit of the room. He notices a sour smell and wonders if there’s another dead mouse in the wall. Then he realizes the smell is coming from him. I’ll have to take a shower when I’m done, so as to better charm my wife.

  When he’s finished with the outlets he goes out to the garage to find his paint pot. When he takes the steps down he feels the fat bobbing up and down the trunk of his body, driving his bare feet hard into the gritty cement slab. He can’t find what he’s looking for among the kids’ toys, bikes, and garden tools. Lynn must have thrown it out, not knowing it is the perfect tool for this specific job. In the kitchen he finds a piece of Lynn’s Tupperware that will do the trick. He’ll have to be sure and dispose of the evidence before she gets home. Otherwise she’ll be pissed. She loves her Tupperware.

  He pours paint into the bowl. The paint is a warm beige, a little too pink. Flip tries to read the label, but the printing is covered with drizzles. He decides to call the color Caucasian. He sets the bowl down and comes back a minute later with a step stool. He grabs his angle brush and stands on the stool. He dabs the tip of his brush in the paint and wipes it on the edge of the bowl. He feels cold. I’m standing around in my boxer shorts, for Christ’s sake. He heads down the hall to turn off the air conditioning.

  He’s still thirsty, and he spilled his beer, so he decides it’d be a good time to go ahead and get another drink. He goes in the kitchen and works his way through the last Sam Adams. From where he stands he can see Kev and Kev’s girlfriend lying out on the deck next door. They are shielding their eyes with bent arms and squinting at one another as they talk and laugh. The muscles of their firm little abdomens pop as they giggle. Flip absently picks something hard out of his bellybutton as he downs the beer.

  Back in the office Flip mounts the stool, brush in hand, and lays the first line of flesh-colored paint along the top of the wall. He steps down, nudges the stool along and steps back up. About halfway around the room, his neck and shoulders start cramping up. He rubs the sore spot at the base of his skull. Herniated disk. He’s sure of it.

  He needs to take something or he’ll get a raging headache. He leaves the paint on the desk with the brush balanced carefully across the mouth of the bowl. In the linen closet he fishes through half-empty prescription bottles until he finds the muscle relaxant he’d been prescribed when he hurt his lower back the year before. He thinks it’s a good idea to take it with alcohol to get the full effect. He drags a kitchen chair over and rummages in the half-cabinet over the fridge until he finds some whisky they’d once used for Irish coffee at their annual neighborhood Christmas gala. He pops the pill and knocks back a mouthful of whisky. He screws the lid back on, but leaves the bottle out, in case his neck and shoulders keep hurting.

  In the office he finds the brush has fallen off the rim of the bowl and is leaving a huge paint blob on Lynn’s desk. Flip leans over to grab the damp cloth he’d used on the bloodstain, and his boxer shorts tear in the back. He feels his cool, damp, fleshy ass through the rip with the tips of his fingers.

  “Damn it all,” he says. He snags the rag and wipes at the paint. Most of it comes up, but the wood grain has soaked up the pink hue and it won’t come out no matter how hard he scrubs. There’s no way Lynn will miss this. He gives up.

  Flip stands on the stool and finishes painting around the edges of the ceiling. When he’s done, he stands back to evaluate and determines he’s done a decent job—could have been steadier, but not bad. He’s feeling lightheaded from the paint fumes, or the drugs and booze. He sets the bowl and brush down and snaps on the ceiling fan, watches the dusty wooden blades slowly rotate and pick up speed. He’ll give it a few minutes to air out before he gets back to work.

  His neck still hurts. He rubs it, tries to pop it, and stretches it from side to side and front to back. In the bathroom he looks through the cabinet for aspirin. He finds sleeping pills, Pepto-Bismol, and sunscreen. He considers searching through the linen closet again, but decides more whisky will be as good as aspirin. After dosing himself thoroughly and pouring more paint in his bowl, he starts cutting in along the baseboards.

  When he leans over with his rump in the air he feels a draft. It’s his favorite pair of boxer shorts too. Now he’ll have to sew them. He wants to ask Lynn to do it for him, but doubts she’d be receptive. Maybe after she sees the room and he sexes her up good. She is always more agreeable after sex. Christmas night was the last time he’d gotten laid, and nearly the last time Lynn had been agreeable. But he can’t blame her. The rug had been jerked out from under them.

  This past Christmas, he’d orchestrated events so that Lynn would open her gift from him last.

  “What’s this?” she said, giving the small
box a little shake.

  “Don’t know. It’s from Santa,” Flip answered. He looked over and grinned at Dylan, winked at Sara. The kids both smiled back.

  “How did Santa know I liked small presents?” she asked.

  “Don’t get too excited. It might be a lump of coal.”

  “I doubt that,” she said, as she tore the little silver bow from the top and went at the silver paper. “I’ve been a very good girl this year.”

  “Maybe Santa saves the best gifts for bad girls,” he joked, allowing a slightly lascivious sneer to creep into the comment.

  “Gross,” Sara said, as she pushed her folded hand into another new, bright bracelet.

  “What’s gross?” Dylan stopped pretend-flying his new Transformer long enough to participate in the exchange.

  “Dad’s being a perv,” she explained.

  “Gross,” Dylan agreed, nodding his little head earnestly. “What’s a perv?”

  “Don’t listen to your sister, Dyl. Play with your robot,” Flip said.

  “Transformer,” Dylan corrected.

  Lynn pulled the little black, felt box out and held it close to her face so she could be the first to peer inside. She pulled up the hinged lid and gasped. Then she licked the ring on her right hand, giving Flip a suggestive glance, and slid it off. She slipped the new ring on and held her hand out as far as she could, to take a good look, twisting it slightly to let the Christmas lights catch in the facets of the jewel. “I love it,” she said. She crawled over and knocked Flip onto his back as she hugged him and planted wet smackers all over his face.

  “Careful with the back,” he said. “It might have some work to do later. If you know what I mean,” he said quietly.

  “Gross,” Sara had said. “You sick perv.”

  Flip finishes cutting in around the baseboards and working the corners without incident. He stands and stretches his lower back; it still aches. He surveys the room. Looking pretty good.

  In the kitchen he twists the lid off the whisky and takes a long swig. The hard part is done. It’s downhill from here. The clock on the microwave reads 3:30. It had taken longer than he thought. There’s no rushing perfection.

  He fills the paint tray, gets the roller ready, and starts rolling the walls. The saturated fibers of the roller pad make a wet whirr, like surf slipping back into the sea. He’s cold again. He turns the ceiling fan off and watches to see that the blades are actually slowing, walks back and steps right in the middle of the full paint tray. He lifts his cold, slippery foot and dangles it over the drop cloth. Tendrils of flesh-toned paint create an instant action painting as he rattles his dripping foot on his swollen ankle. He loses his balance and steps right on the frantic design he’d just made, slides along in the paint slick. His other foot moves to keep him from falling and steps onto the paint roller; it shifts and crushes under his weight, pitching him, gut first, onto the paint tray. He lies there a long time with most of the air knocked out of him. He can smell the whisky on his own stale breath as he exhales into the drop cloth.

  The paint tray has cut his side. He worries he’s broken a rib. He gets up on all fours and looks under himself as the paint drools from his soft, sagging belly. His skin is pale and stark against the vivid pink smear. He backs himself onto his feet, and after two failed attempts, he stands. Cold paint slowly rolls over the front of his boxer shorts. This frustrates him. At least I won’t need to sew them.

  The baseboard is splashed with pink, the rug is soaking up pink paint, and his torso is dripping paint onto the tops of his hairy toes and yellowed toenails. It looks like the slaughter scene from a slasher film, only in anemic, pastel tones. This is horrible.

  This was what he was afraid of; it’s exactly why he’d avoided this job for weeks. Disaster is an inevitable outcome of everything he tries to do lately. I’m cursed.

  Flip reaches back to steady himself against the desk. His hand comes down on the round-bottomed Tupperware bowl; the bowl tips up and pours paint on the top of Lynn’s desk.

  “Oh no.” He kneels where he is. His knees give up and he dry sobs into his hands for a long, long time, the edge of his bandaged hand leaving smears of paint along the stubble of his unshaven face.

  When Flip is bored with sobbing, he forms a new plan. First, he marches into the kitchen with his body still dripping paint and takes long pulls of whisky. After a few minutes he begins to feel courageous. He drains the bottle and throws it in the sink. He makes his way into the bathroom and washes down the bottle of sleeping pills with Pepto-Bismol. It tastes worse than he imagined possible. He doesn’t want that to be the last thing he ever tastes, so he goes to the freezer, digs around and stands over the sink, pounding down chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with an oversized serving spoon as fast as he can. His stomach doesn’t seem too happy about it. He pats his fat chest a few times, and belches long and loud.

  He realizes he’s drunk when he opens his mouth wide and pokes himself in the left eye with a spoonful of ice cream. He wipes off his eyelashes and keeps at it, one eye closed, because he likes to finish what he’s started. Eventually he polishes it off and leaves the carton and spoon in the sink. As he stumbles away, his belly smears paint along the edge of the counter and the doorjamb.

  In the office he finds the belt of his robe and makes a noose in one end. It eats up over half of the belt’s length. But it should still work. His paint-spattered toes find purchase on the middle shelf of a bookcase and he teeters drunkenly, periodically throwing his arms out for balance as he tries to loop the other end of the belt over the motor of the ceiling fan. When he’s satisfied with his work, he sticks his head through the noose and tightens it.

  I’m ready, he tells himself.

  He doesn’t know the proper protocol, but he assumes he should leave a note. He doesn’t know what to say, and Sorry is all that comes to his foggy brain. It would be a lot of effort to go and write a note that only says “Sorry.” Is it really worth it? Can’t I just blow it off? I’m beat. Finally he realizes it will be inconsiderate to his family to not explain his actions, so he digs his fingers into the knot and manages to loosen it. He loses his balance, and the bookcase half full of self-help books tumbles onto the floor, where they join their beer-soaked brethren.

  He dangles there, looking up the short piece of terry cloth toward the ceiling fan. He’s shocked the fall hasn’t broken his neck; in fact, it has made his neck feel better. Not a herniated disk, after all. What a relief.

  He’s surprised he can still breathe and that the tips of his toes touch the floor, though his foot throbs from where the book crushed it. He worries at the way the fan is cocked sideways over his head. What if it falls and gives him a nasty concussion?

  Then he hears the garage door opening. His ass is cold. How embarrassing would it be for his family to find him hanging there, dead, with his boxer shorts ripped?

  He tries to reach around and close the gap in his shorts. The movement causes Flip to twist slowly, like a grotesque, sad, hobo ballerina en pointe, and as he does, his eyes drift around the paint-drenched room, at the pink carpet and baseboards, at the trail of spatters and footprints leading in and out of the room, and at the half-painted walls.

  House keys rattle and the voices of his bickering children come to him. He hears his mother-in-law’s voice too. He thinks of the whisky bottle, the ice cream carton, and the stench of beer. As the door opens, his eyes rest on Lynn’s desk and her Tupperware bowl.

  “Oh shit,” he thinks. He reflexively reaches to tighten the belt around his bare middle and realizes he’s hanging from it, by his neck.

  “Oh shit,” he says again. Then he tries as hard as he can to be dead.

  A Supposed Source of Helpful Advice

  Flip’s nose is runny and he’s convinced he’s allergic to some spore that has leached its way through the floor from the flower shop below. He swipes his nose with the side of his hand and snorts. Then he wipes his hand on his XXXL Hawaiian shirt. It’s new. One of the
purchases Lynn made on the way home from the amusement park. He’s also wearing new khaki shorts from the Big and Tall men’s store. The clothes make him feel short, broad, and lush, like a tropical cinder block

  Flip looks over at Lynn. She’s snapping the pages of an Architectural Digest at the opposite side of the tiny waiting room. He coughs, clears his throat, and snorts again. Lynn refuses to glance in his direction. He drops a copy of Golf Digest on the side table and cruises the room, looking for Kleenex. There are none. There are six chairs, two sets of three different styles of mid-century modern classics. He doesn’t know the names of the designers, but he’s sure they are European. Each set of similar designs has different colors and patterns. The effect, Flip is sure, is supposed to be eclectic and casual, yet sophisticated. Flip finds it obvious, trendy, and pretentious; but to each his own.

  “What kind of shrink doesn’t supply his clients with Kleenex?” he asks rhetorically.

  Lynn looks at him out of the top of her eyes. Flip takes her glare as encouragement.

  “I mean, don’t you think with all the blubbering that goes on in this type of place he should have Kleenex everywhere? I think it shows a lack of consideration, if not a lack of professionalism.”

  Lynn licks a fingertip and snaps a page. She exhales heavily and concentrates on reading an ad for designer replacement windows.

  The “he” Flip is referring to is Dr. Hawkins. Flip has a deep dislike for Dr. Scruffy Face already. On the day of the recent unpleasantness, as Flip likes to think of it, after the ambulance arrived, Flip was rushed to the emergency room at St. Elizabeth’s. His stomach was emptied with a combination of ipecac, liquid charcoal plunged through a nose tube directly to his stomach, and some kind of medicine that emptied his bowels in a horrible and violent black-licorice-smelling eruption. While it turned out to be an effective hangover cure, he wouldn’t recommend it.